For my recent BarCamp session I shared a design technique that a colleague and I developed quite recently that we’ve found to be quite successful in both generating great design ideas and developing consensus about the design approach for projects within a multi-disciplinary team.

We callÂ this techniqueÂ Design Consequences, due to the similarity it has with the similarly named childrens games. We tend to use it in the earlier stages of the design process, although it can be used for more detailed interface design problems.

So, how does it work? It’s pretty simple really.

What you need:

a clearly articulated design problem and design goal(s)– for the BarCamp exercise our design problem was to design an electronic version of the BarCamp session wall where people could add their own session and choose which sessions they were going to attend.Â

some design ideas or components – when I do this in a client context, we do this by spending time beforehand looking at our specific challenges and seeing how other people have approached them, and trying to understand design techniques or principles that work (as well as those that don’t). This gives people access to a much greater repoirtore of ideas to draw in the Design Consequences exercise.

a multi-disciplinary team– try to get the entire team if you can. The exercise works best with no more than 8 people involved, but it can be done with more if required. Get management to the table, bring all kinds of designers, bring the product managers and marketers, bring your developers. Bring everyone you can, as long as they’re familiar with the project and the design problem.

lots of paper and markers and post its – make them as colourful and fun as possible. Make it look like a crafting session. A sense of play and enjoyment is key to this exercise.

some examples of the type of output you’re expecting – anything that starts with the word ‘design’ can be very intimidating and scary. Lots of people ahve been told throughout their lives that they can’t draw, or that they aren’t creative. I have some *very* scratchy samples that have been created by people who design for a living. I show these before we get started so that people realise quickly that pretty drawings are not part of the equation.

A bundle of energy – you need to be justÂ a little bit hyper to run this exercise :)

What you do:

Round One – everyone has seven minutes to design, individually, the the first page that users would see when confronting the ‘design problem’. So, a typical example would be a website homepage, but it could be any part of an application or website or even, say, an email. The faciliator(s) should participate, but keep an eye on the clock and give some warnings with a few minutes to go, and again at about 30 seconds.

Round Two – here’s the consequences twist. Everyone picks up the page they’ve designed, then passes it on to the person on their right (or left, it doesn’t really matter).Â Everyone then has to review the page they’ve received (ask for clarification from the original designer if it’s a little sketchy in places), then decide – ifÂ you were the user, what would *you* interact with, and what would happen next.Â You haveÂ seven minutes to draw ‘what happens next’. (Don’t tell people about Round Two before Round One, it’s much more fun when it’s a bit of a surprise).

Show and Tell – we then go around in a circle and each personÂ describes the page they received, what aspect they chose to interact with and why, and then describes what they designed next. Discussion is encouraged.

What do you get?Â Lots of great data, and lots of great conversation fodder.

It’s a good idea to capture as much of this as possible as you go around the group. Of course, the best way to do this is to write up ideas onto post it notes as you go and stick them on the wall. There should be an ‘in’ section of the wall and an ‘out’ section of the wall. (‘In’ means that the idea has legs for this particular design problem). Affinity sorting on the run also helps to draw out the key themes or ideas that have emerged from the exercise. You should be leading the group discussion, helping the group to gain consesus and make decisions as to the design approach to be taken in solving the design problem, and trying to document these decisions as you go.

This process can be quite time consuming and intense, but more often than not there will be a few key ideas that the group is particularly enthusiastic about and that really propels the decision making.

By the end of the session you should be in a position where everyone is in agreement about *what* will be included in the wireframes that comprise the next phase of the design process.

Why would you use this approach?

It makes a great change from the talk-festÂ of meetings

It generates lots of ideas – and often some really great onesÂ

It stops people getting to attached to their design ideas and makes evaluation and critiquing more effective

It helps get all the team feedback and ideas into the pot (in particular, it’s great to get management and technical input at this stage)

It drives buy-in, involvement and consensus

It pulls in cross-discipline scills (for example, developers are often really great at quickly identifying great ID approaches for Rich Internet Applications)

You’d be amazed what you learn earlier rather than later by involving the entire team at this early stage

Getting lots of brains involved in the design process can uncover some really creative gems

It makes the design process faster

It’s fun!

So, there you have it. Some quick notes on a technique that’s been quite useful for me lately. I’d be interested to hear what you think of it and if you try it, to see if you too find it useful.

7 Comments

This sounds like a great technique. I teach something similar in a paper prototyping workshop that I run from time-to-time, but this is much more immediate. (I especially like your â€˜insâ€™ and â€˜outsâ€™ concept â€“ a sooper-simple way of sorting and capturing the output.)

Iâ€™m a big fan of these kinds of techniques because they generate ideas quickly and early, they help to focus the team and, most importantly, they drastically lower the barrier for participation (allowing you to tap into the creativity of your entire team, your stakeholders and even your users â€“ heresy in these Designer-driven days!) Thanks for sharing.

Hi Leisa,
thanks for sharing the whole process!
I really enjoyed our design consequences session at the BarCampLondon, and I’m planning to use it in a similar (barcamp) context in Italy soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Olivier
October 9, 2008 at 9:46 am

Hi. Would you be willen to share (some of) those “*very* scratchy samples”? I’m not a designer so I don’t really have access to lots of wireframes and other design examples. I will be doing this exercise in a couple of days though.

Thanks for presenting this on #iamini, I managed to try it out already two days later.

Just to give you some feedback on the way we used it.
Because we already have an existing site, and I was a bit worried that when I would ask them to sketch, they would just sketch the current site, we defined to goal as “Sketch in five minutes how our site would work on the iPhone”

The outcome was quite a positive surprise, everyone got involved, all using their own approach, we got some bullet points list, some sketches, some flowcharts.

To speed it up a bit we decided to pick some people representing the different divisions to explain their sketches and ideas. And eventually asked everyone to give their two words on it.

The outcome was that everyone had a better understanding of what was really important and also how the current situation related to the one we all agreed on.

So, exercise was successful! I am wondering though if I could repeat this a few times without everyone getting stuck to what they did last time. Perhaps moving to another piece of technology, a set top box, a watch, etc.

About me

My name is Leisa Reichelt. This is my blog.

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I lead the Research and Insights team at Atlassian where we are interested in understanding how to unleash the potential in every team.

Previously I was the Head of Service Design at the Digital Transformation Agency of the Australian Government and the Head of User Research for the Government Digital Service (GDS) in the UK Government – makers of GOV.UK

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